Public health experts from different parts of the country have called on the Centre to include a mitigation and prevention strategy for the impacts of air pollution on health in the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) – a national level strategy to reduce air pollution.

NCAP highlights a list of 100 non-attainment cities that have not met the requisite air quality standards set by the Government of India, and Kolkata falls in the top five cities that has failed to comply with both PM10 and NO2 standards.

Carbon emissions in the EU were up 1.8 percent from 2016, Eurostat said, with a double-digit increase in Malta and Estonia.
Finland and Denmark showed the sharpest declines while emissions in Germany, the bloc's largest economy and still dependent on coal for 40 percent of its electricity, was little changed.

In a statement, the ministry said as most of the polluted cities lie around Delhi and along the Indo-Gangetic plain, it is critical that the governments of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal are sensitised to take up urgent action on cleaning air.

Fed up with the smog in Mongolia's capital, residents have resorted to sipping "lung" tea and "oxygen cocktails" in a desperate bid to protect themselves from pollution, despite health officials saying there is no evidence they work.

Australian scientists Denise Hardesty and Chris Wilcox estimate, using trash collected on US coastlines during clean ups over five years, that there are nearly 7.5 million plastic straws lying around America's shorelines.